Edge of the Known World

2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories including Best New Fiction Political Thriller and Science Fiction Alexandra Tashen is a brilliant student adoring daughter merry wit and exuberant prankster. After a blissful childhood on a Texas ranch she learns the truth: She is a refusé an illegal refugee smuggled into the Allied Nations as an infant. Everyone from her birth region carries a harmless but detectable bit of viral DNA from a flu vaccine. If detected by the rapid genetic testing at security screens Alex will be returned to the Federation and a likely death. Her adoptive father developed a gene therapy to mask her g-marker but it is not fully effective. Every g-screen presents a nerve-racking one-in-ten chance of getting caught. When her father goes missing Alex abandons her cloistered academic life in San Francisco for a globe-trotting Commission in a desperate race to warn him of a trap that will destroy them both. As Alex dodges g-screens on her precarious and often-hilarious adventure a love triangle develops between her and two men: Eric Burton a commanding and disgraced intelligence officer and his blood brother Strav Beki a charismatic and dangerously unhinged diplomat. Betrayals mount and secrets unravel building to the most confounding choices that people can face-choices between love family loyalty and moral obligation.